Incurable Rapid Happiness I.R.H.

Some of you may know others may not that after the completion of my dory Florence I started a design of my own.

Admittedly I haven't had Flo on enough water to really  know all her quirks but several things struck me as I was rowing about. First and foremost it is a big boat. I know that at 17 ', she is smaller that many dorys and most of the oar rafts out there, but her size and the spread of her oars 18' really limit the rivers/streams row-able  Another issue is the oar lock angle, its steep. I could build some monster oarlock that allows me to mount the locks in a more verticle orientation (giving more range of motion) but that seams to go against the aesthetics of the original design. Finally its a big job to move a dory in and out of the river when the rivers being run don't have boat ramps (or really shitty ramps) and your by yourself.

So I tossed these thoughts in the ol' salad spinner and let them twirl with the rest of the random thoughts.  A few weeks went by, I was out in Port Townsend visiting the Northwest School for Wooden Boat Building (where I'll be going in a few weeks) and I saw some fine row boats with double chines. Hmmmm, that would solve the oar lock problem. But how short is to short?

Pen to the sketch book I started thinking about it. 15' seemed good but what's 2ft. If I 'm gonna go small I may as well go really small sub 10'? So it turns out that a sub 10' dory looks like a weird bath tub. Than I started drawing 10' double enders. These looked OK but really more like some cracked out kayak or canoe. adding a transom really fixed that right up.

After a couple of drafts I started to circulate the hull drawings to a few people. I had a couple of folks (namely Tom Martin) get me thinking, why I had drawn that flat spot in the bottom?  My reasoning originally was for carrying capacity and stability. After some thought I realized that longitudinal stability would be just as good with a continuous rocker (rocking chair). As for carrying capacity, this thing will already be able to hold enough beer I won't need a tent.

I really didn't need to name this thing, after all whomever builds one can call it whatever the hell they want. But originally I was going to go with Stupid Fish (I wish fish were stupid than I might be able to catch more) but I found a much better name in Tom Martins book Big Water Little Boats Inside there is a quote by Marston, "Incurable rapid happiness." I shortened it to IRH as the intended goal of this boat is indeed "incurable rapid happiness".

Here are some snaps of the drawings at this point.

So where does this stand now? Well in the next week or so I'll  get these drawings off the graph paper and inked onto something better. Then off to Kinko's to have copies made. I want this to be a free design, you can decide to stitch & glue (what I am planning) or ladder build the boat. I should have the drawings available for some small (copy and shipping) fee really soon, so if your interested comment on this post and I'll make sure you get them.

Oh, and here is a stencil of a snail.

Yep, a snail.